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Saturday, 8 September 2012

Basingstoke on foot

First, I went to Tesco. Susan had gotten a petrol (5p/litre off) voucher, and I was very low, so I tanked up. And they gave me another voucher, this was for £20 off any TomTom product.

A few days ago, the 4gb memory card on my Mio stopped working, taking my copy of TomTom with it. I had bought a copy of TomTom for the Mio, a few years ago.

When I called TomTom to explain the situation, their attitude was basically "tough luck, buy another copy". Huh? Well. So I researched TomTom hardware, thinking that I'll run it without using the Mio, and I decided that the XXL Classic was what I wanted, and I could get it for around £110.

I took the Tesco voucher into Tesco with me, where I bought my day's rations (one sandwich and a bunch of fruit), and while I was there, I had a look at their TomToms. The XXL was the only one they had (or at least, I didn't see any others), and it was £100, which is a good price, and I would be getting it for £80 with my voucher. Some things are just meant to be, so I'm now the proud owner of a TomTom XXL. I only hope I can work out how to make it work - right now, all it's doing is showing me a picture of a TomTom. Oh, and they gave me another petrol voucher. This could run and run!

Then out to Basingstoke, to do the first circuit of the day, . I did two caches, and then the bike packed up. The electrics failed, so I biked back to the car, and left it there, and proceeded on foot, which is annoying because it was a perfect bikable circuit.

I did 21 caches, including a Church Micro, a multi that I did without visiting the church, because on my way to it, I spotted a tree with a suspicious-looking cacher's trail, and hey, here's a prominent looking stone leaning up behind it, and under the stone was the cache!

I'm glad to say that I was able to walk the six miles of the circuit; I wasn't sure that I'd be able to, because I've been avoiding walking for a while now (because of the hip tendonitis). I found all 21 caches, then back to the car for lunch.

Then out again to another nearby ring; 12 caches plus a bonus. While I was looking for one of them, I found a very old cache; it was in a couple of plastic bags and it had been archived. I first found it four years ago, "Oh! Mr Porter"

Back home, I dismantled the bike motor, thinking that maybe water has gotten in again (maybe I'll use some Red Hematite on it) but I couldn't see anything wrong. So I got my spare bike out, adjusted the gears (it's needed that for a long time), and the brakes, and the back rack, and I'm ready to go again while I sort out Bike 1.

Nine miles walked today, which is a useful thing to know that I can do, and 34 caches.